2D animation is the power...(PART II)

Carrying on the good work from where I left in my last article, I guess I will be quite instrumental in scripting the success stories of many leading animators the country will produce in the future. Not writing much about the future and keeping our focus on the present here is the second part of the article.

In my last post i described till the role and action of the background artist; looking ahead is the next step.Once the clean-ups and in between drawings for a sequence are completed, they are prepared for photography, a process known as ink-and-paint. Each drawing is then transferred from paper to a thin, clear sheet of plastic called a cel, so called because they were once made out of cellulose nitrate.The outline of the drawing is inked or photocopied the cel, and gouache or a similar type of paint is used on the reverse sides of the cels to add colors in the appropriate shades. In many cases, characters will have more than one color palette assigned to them; the usage of each one depends upon the mood and lighting of each scene. The transparent quality of the cel allows for each character or object in a frame to be animated on different cels, as the cel of one character can be seen underneath the cel of another; and the opaque background will be seen beneath all of the cels.

When an entire sequence has been transferred to cels, the photography process begins. Each cel involved in a frame of a sequence is laid on top of each other, with the background at the bottom of the stack. A piece of glass is lowered onto the artwork in order to flatten any irregularities, and the composite image is then photographed by a special animation camera, also called rostrum camera .The cels are removed, and the process repeats for the next frame until each frame in the sequence has been photographed. Each cel has registration holes, small holes along the top or bottom edge of the cel, which allow the cel to be placed on corresponding peg bars before the camera to ensure that each cel aligns with the one before it; if the cels are not aligned in such a manner, the animation, when played at full speed, will appear "jittery." Sometimes, frames may need to be photographed more than once, in order to implement superimpositions and other camera effects. Pans are created by either moving the cels or backgrounds one step at a time over a succession of frames.

As the scenes come out of final photography, they are spliced into the Leica reel, taking the place of the pencil animation. Once every sequence in the production has been photographed, the final film is sent for development and processing, while the final music and sound effects are added to the soundtrack. Again, editing is generally not done in animation, but if it is required it is done at this time, before the final print of the film is ready for duplication or broadcast.
It should be noted that the actual "traditional" ink-and-paint process is no longer in use by any major animated productions at present.

Computers and video cameras in traditional cel animation can also be used as tools without affecting the film directly, assisting the animators in their work and making the whole process faster and easier. Doing the layouts on a computer is much more effective than doing it the old original way. And video cameras gives the opportunity to see a "sneak preview" of the scenes and how they will look when finished, enabling the animators to correct and improve them without having to complete them first. This can be considered a digital form of pencil testing.